light for the way

I was going through some of the papers in the bag from the funeral home. I no longer wanted that bag, with its remembrance of Mama's death, and wanted it out of my life. The bag had been passed along to me after my stepdad's death.
Death, death, death.
So, I'm reading the book the funeral home had given to our family. The book contains the signatures of folks present at the visitation, signatures of folks present at the funeral, names of those who had sent flowers.
Sigh.
Tucked in with all of that sadness was this poem. I copied it when I wrote to my youngest brother in north Georgia and thought I was done with it.
Then I thought I might want to keep it handy.
So, here it is.

*** *** *** *** ***
What God Hath Promised

God hath not promised
Skies always blue,
Flower-Strewn pathways
All our lives through;
God hath not promised
Sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow
Peace without pain.

But God hath promised
Strength for the day,
Rest for the labor,
Light for the way,
Grace for the trials,
Help from above,
Unfailing sympathy,
Undying love.

by Annie Johnson Flint

anchors aweigh, dear George

Like myself, George was a former member of the United States Navy. As such, I know he would have appreciated having that song linked to memories of him, especially these lines:
"Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors aweigh,
Farewell to college joys, we sail at break of day-ay-ay-ay,
Through our last night on shore, drink to the foam,
Until we meet once more, here's wishing you a happy voyage home."

He was the carver of the turkey at Thanksgivings when my mother and his dad were still alive and the whole family would gather for the feast and to watch the Detroit Lions lose. Sometimes the Lions would win, usually not. But George could always be counted on for a few ribald jokes in the carport while he had a smoke or two.

He was the carver of the ham at Christmas Eve buffets where first food was demolished, then wrapping paper on gifts for the many grandchildren the blended family gave to my mother and his father. Between him and his two sisters and my three brothers, there were eleven grandchildren by birth (Stephen, Christina, Damon, Jason, Zach, Jean Marie, Emily, Michael, Hope, Zaida, and Molly), one by adoption (Tyler), and three steps (Christy, Clint, and Chelsea). Incredible wealth of love and joy!

He always had a ready hug and a quick bit of humor. That will be sorely missed. For one of the last times that I saw him, I had made sure to bring a joke of my own. Of course, it wasn't the deep sea blue flavor he really enjoyed, but it was one he could readily share with anyone near. I'm sure he did, too.

Lung cancer has cut his life short. He would have been a speed limit himself, 65, next month.

I will miss his mischievous, little boy smile. I will miss the glint of an inside joke peeking out of his eyes.
I will miss him.

poor little tigers

Before the events recorded in yesterday's post, the following transpired. As I had really enjoyed the "company" that morning, here's the transcript from our texting to and fro.

5 Sept, 10:19 PM:
ex: Scott has already invited me to see Atlanta play in Detroit if they both go to the world series. High hopes, huh? :-)

me (the next day, 10:11 AM): Scott certainly has high hopes for the Braves, as he does every year. How ARE the Tigers doing?
ex: Wednesday night, the BoSox took them into a dark alley, mugged them and left them for dead. 20-4
me: OUCH.
me: What a drubbing.
ex: Yeah, I was at my favorite bowling alley with the Michigan craft beers that night. A beating that bad needs police involvement.
me: Hahaha! Maybe there was. Can u imagine how the fans wanted to storm the dugout? Ug-ly, with a capital UG.
ex: A lot of camera shots of Detroit skipper Jim Leyland looking UNhappy. He's pretty dog-faced to begin with, so just imagine THAT sight.
me: Hey, i am trying to eat breakfast here! lol! While I am thinking about it, did you get a chuckle about SCAD wanting to send you a check?
ex: Chuckle, hell. I'll jump up and kiss anybody that wants to just give me money out of the blue. :-)
me: Heard THAT. I'll get my first paycheck since May @ the end of the month.
ex: Don't they give you the option of spreading out your money over the entire year?
me: No. And as i am back to Adjunct status, the pay is roughly 1/3.
ex: Aw f&ck. I didn't know. I know you didn't want tenure track and the crap that goes with it. You going to be okay?
me: I will. i hope. May apply for advisor job there, i think i would like it. but i prefer to teach.

me (about 20 minutes later): Christina called and i didn't know how to talk and text simultaneously. Can u do that?
ex: I can but I don't know is *your* phone supports it. My Android does.
me: Oh, you did NOT go there! Everyone picks on my phone.
ex: I hit the back button while I'm in a call, then just go to the text area.
ex: I did not pick on your phone. I don't even know what kind of phone you have.
me: Maybe mine does that. will check it out. That 1st niece says "the 1980's called, they want ur phone back." just because it's a flip style.
ex: Like she'd know. In the 80's, cell phones looked like combat walkie talkies and cost God-knows-what per minute to use.
ex: That's right, it's not a smart phone is it?
me: No, no, no!
ex: Okay then - Now I'll make fun of your cell phone. :-)
me: No internet on my hip!
me: :-) Well fine. humph. (stomps off in a huff.)
me: Gotta jet! Bye!
ex: Bye! :-)

end transmission: 12:09 PM, in the lobby of the tire store

THAT was fun!

bet yer bottom dollar that tomorrow, there'll be sun

I can be such a wienie.
Poor, poor, pitiful me.
Waaah.
That point was driven home for me while waiting for my car to become more street-legal. I'd thought I was just there to have the oil changed - no, wait, that's not quite true. I had TOLD myself I was there for the oil change, for which my car was 1,000 miles late and a month early.
I had also told them that I had a wobble at midrange speeds and needed that to be investigated.
I already KNEW what they would find and I had done some research to find out what that was going to cost. You know, to psych myself up for the financial one-two sucker punch.
I already KNEW they would find that my tires needed to be replaced, that they had reached the end of their lifespan. That said, I knew the price tag for that would be about four hundred bucks. Oh, sure, the tires would be about sixty dollars, so you're thinking $240, plus tax, DONE.
No.
You see, there's the fee to dispose of each old tire.
There's the State Tire Impact Fee.
There's the fee for the valve stem so the tire can be inflated.
There's the fee to balance the tire before it's put on the car.
Oh, and there's the fee for the bits of metal to balance the tire.
Altogether, that's $4.00 + $1.00 + $4.99 + $7.00 + $2.99, or $19.98. Per tire.
Plus tax.
So, I KNEW I was going to buy new tires today and came prepared to do so. Mentally, at least. Thank God I have plastic to pay for it all.
I also KNEW they would find my car was out of alignment. I've known that ever since I ran over the deer.
Oh, didn't I tell you about that?
No?
Well, when I was driving from Pennsylvania to Virginia in July, I was tooling along, enjoying the blue sky and rolling highway and steady traffic flow, lah dee dah, lah dee dah. Then, as I topped a rise in the road, I saw it: a downed deer, straight in my path!!!
There was no time to maneuver around it into another lane. No time at 80 miles per hour.
So I steered the car to pass OVER it, trying to hit as little as possible. Hopin' and prayin' my car had enough clearance to pass over and not get lodged atop of the dead beast. Holding my breath and trying to levitate the car just a little bit, just enough to float over the animal...
And as quickly as I had come upon it, I'm past it. Whew! Relief!
I hadn't felt an impact from running over any part of it! Yeah!
But what was that awful smell???
Indeed. What WAS that awful smell? That smell of burned hair, burned flesh?
I had tried not to think about it, though it persisted for several days. But my car still ran, when I could get it started. So I had continued with my vacation, telling myself I would have it checked out when I returned home.
But I didn't.
Today, I found out the hook that holds the exhaust pipe in place had snagged a bit of deer hide. The hook had stayed in place, miraculously, rather than breaking off. But that hook had snugged that bit of animal flesh against that hot metal, too, releasing the horrid smell.
If you ask me, I was given a miracle that day. The entire episode could have been so much uglier.
So, back to today's events, yes?
Yes.
As I was saying, I knew today was going to cost me and was mentally ready for it and was even carrying an appropriate piece of plastic to absorb the financial hit.
At first, I'm sitting there, texting with my ex about my sorrows and commiserating with him about his. Then I finish with him and pick up the issue of "People" sitting on the table. It's a fairly bedraggled issue and is dated 24 June. Hey, at least it was for this year, right?
I was skimming through the contents, trying to find a tale or two to pass the time. Whoa... what's THAT? It was an amazing story of love from the ashes.
Literally.
Both of these people had been horribly burned.
He had been painting a church when he made near-fatal contact with a live wire, burning his face off. No exaggeration.
She had been texting while driving. Her car flipped over and burst into flames and she was trapped inside it for twenty minutes. She has no idea what the text was that had seemed more important than attention to the road.
They had met and fallen in love and were wed in March.
Incredible.
And there I've been, whining about my first-world problems, as the bfe calls them.
Waah.
That kind of story puts the world back into a better perspective, doesn't it?
So, now my tires have new bling and I'm safe to drive again.
I've had an hour-long texting session with my ex, with him starting it.
That was nice.
I've had a real-live talk with my first niece, with her starting it.
That was nice, too.
My bff checked on me this evening and had this message: "You're not broke, you're not starving, and you're not alone. Everything else is small stuff." She is SUCH a mom!
And that was very nice.
For dinner, I actually cooked something besides soup. A lot of onions, a bit of garlic, and some discounted filet mignon bought a few weeks ago and now rescued from my freezer. A bit of pasta with olive oil and some Mrs. Dash, too.
Very nice! I even used a real plate, too.
Later, I'll be joining some friends for a special Friday night edition of the improv show I now miss on Mondays. Actually, there will be TWO of the Odd Lot shows tonight, and one of them will be bLuE!!!
Tomorrow, I have a baby shower for a niece I haven't seen since her graduation from high school several years ago. She and her honey had moved to Tennessee, then to Mexico. I am very much looking forward to that!
Then more friends at movies and pool parties and dinner!
I think my pity party has been called on account of love.

all mine, my Precious

I hate feeling like I'm broke.
I most definitely AM broke. And I certainly dislike being broke.
But I truly hate feeling like I'm broke.
You get the distinction?
For the past few weeks, I find myself playing this little game. It's called "wanna go to a movie?" and it goes like this:
1) since I have a bit of time on my hands these days, I'll pull up the cinema schedules to see what's playing;
2) I select a movie with a near-future start time and allow myself to look forward to going to it;
3) I putz around on the computer or in the house until too late to actually GO to the movie (even taking into account the fifteen minutes of ads and previews beforehand);
4) I tell myself it's just as well that I missed it as I don't have the money anyway for such things;
5) depending on the time, wait a few hours or a day and play again.
It gets to be quite frustrating, as I know before I look at the schedules that I'm most likely NOT going to the movie.
It all ties in too nicely with this new pity party I've been having.

I've been working hard on this pity party for weeks. I really have.
Today, I decided to toss an invite to my bff and see if she would rsvp.
She did, of course.
That's what bffs do.
Especially since I'm the 'glass half-full' gal most of the time.

Here's my invite to her, just after eleven o'clock this morning:
me: Life is hard. really sux right now.

bff: For you? What's up?

me: My stepbrother is dying, the peace Guy is gone, the first niece lives across town, no one to hug, no health insurance, no money coming in, the bfe busy with tenure stuff. I could go on.

bff: ugh. Sounds like you need beach and tequila.

me: I think I need more than that. At least the folks in the Student Success Committee were glad to have me yesterday, even tho i wasn't allowed to Chair it anymore.

me: The faculty Senate made me vacate the position when they found i was part-time status. Ditched me by unsigned email. Bass turds.

bff: yeah, that was wrong. They don't know what they are missing.

me: That is EXACTLY what the folks on the StuSucCom said! too many people do committee work just to pad their resumes. that's bullshit to do that.

bff: You have just got a big heart...

bff: maybe it's time for you to start sleeping your way to the top... haha.

me: yeah. not gonna happen. Cannot even picture that act with the dean or dept head.

bff: Maybe you and I should move to Montana and become old-lady pole dancers!!!

me: that could definitely be fun. :-)

bff: Well sweetheart, hang in there. Life really sux sometimes.

me: Heard.

No, I didn;t tell her about my middle brother living in the woods in a tent and dining on goodies from grocery store dumpsters.
He actually dines better than I do much of the time, having fresh meat a-plenty versus the canned meat I usually buy.
Plus, she is already aware of that.

No, I didn't whine about the lethargy and ennui fogging my path daily. After all, I can usually fight my way clear when I have papers to grade.
Because she is aware of that, too.

No, I didn't harp on the mess my house is most of the time, piles of unfiled papers, dust on nearly every ledge, dead palmetto bugs upside-down on the sunroom floor.
She's seen it and she is not fazed. She has seen how quickly I can whip it into shape when given the incentive.

No, i didn't add that my car has extra shakes or my air conditionling has an intermittent problem or I still have a critter traipsing around in my attic.
She would just look at me and ask why I hadn't already taken care of these bits and pieces?
After all, she has heard of some of the issues for months and months...

And how would my rising debt be any news to her? Heck, I've always had credit card fever and lately I've let it ride. She's been down that road, too, and we both know how to deal with it. Mine is starting to feel a little out of control, hence the "wanna go to a movie?" game.

Tonight, I started playing the game again. And, as usual, I putzed around until almost too late to catch the movie. Almost, but not quite.
The ticket didn't cost me anything, either. I had a free pass for that cinema, a free pass that the peace Guy had laft for me to use when he moved to Jet City.
So, in a way, he paid for me to go see the movie. What a treat!
So I treated myself to popcorn and a soda.
And this particular movie was just what my doctor would have ordered for me, if she had been aware that I was feeling so overwhelmed by life in general and everything in particular.
Watching demons and evil vampires get returned to the dust from which they rose is pretty damn satisfying.
Almost as relaxing as killing zombies.
Now, I'm not quite right as rain, but I'm getting there.
And tomorrow my car has an appointment for a remedy.

tcb, y'all

TCB. The bfe likes to use that acronym and does so frequently. For those who don't know, it's taking care of business. The of is silent - or invisible, as it were.
Today, I've spent some time in tcb mode, but I don't know that many would grant me that.
This morning, after breakfast and blogging, I took out the trash. I had noticed a funky smell in the house and had finally tracked down its source last night. The bag of red potatoes I'd left on the cool kitchen floor had not weathered the loss of air conditioning on Friday. Some of the potatoes had become quite decrepit and disgusting. I had placed the bag in another bag and tied it off, then bundled that into yet another bag to prevent any leakage. Then I set it aside for this morning. After all, I was already in my nightgown when I found the bit of nastiness.
Then, as noon was fast approaching, I headed for the ball park for my boys of summer's last home game of the season. Hard to believe I'll have to wait for April of 2014 to see them again! I sat with Willie and Arthur, both almost as old as the historic stadium itself. I do hope they will be cheering alongside me in the spring!
The Gnats lost, but it was a tight game against Greenville. That's okay, the boys won the doubleheaders on both Friday and Saturday against this team. Losing the low-scoring, early afternoon games of yesterday and today was just a minor blip on their record and made for some good baseball for us to watch.
I came home, blogged a bit more, then decided I would grant my wishes of seeing a cheap movie and munching a bit of popcorn. Going to "Kick-Ass 2" at the Carmike around the corner granted both with a minimum expenditure of money. You see, the 4:00 to 5:30 PM matinees are only $5.50, so that saved me a few bucks. Plus, I have the magical popcorn bucket which refills for only $3.50. Wow! Big savings! So, I was even able to treat myself to a frozen Coca-Cola - super sweet, in every sense! And the movie was great fun, showing a very different Jim Carrey and boasting a positive message. Yeah!
After the movie, I felt refreshed! Time to do laundry! After all, I had one lonely pair of panties still clean and Nami's would be closed on Tuesday, as it always is. So, I dashed into the house, sorted the laundry, put dish detergent on the spots that needed to be out, grabbed some clothes hangers and off I flew!
But my beautiful laundrette was closed. On a Monday.
Well, this was no ordinary Monday, was it? No. It was Labor Day Monday.
Fine. I would use the alternate place I had scouted earlier this summer. I don't like it as much, mstly because she won't be there to talk to, but it's clean so it will do.
Or so I thought. This evening, it was fine when I first arrived, but became a madhouse by the time my load was done. So many others needing a Monday night wash, so many with small children! Arrrgh!
Still, it wouldn't have been such an ordeal if not for the phone calls received and made whilst there. The one received was to inform me that my stepbrother was back in the hospital again. He had barely a day at home before his heart became overtaxed from the tiny amount of oxygen it was receiving from his one partially working lung. I then called my eldest younger brother to let him and his family know.
Then, while making that call, my voicemail registered a missed call from the peace Guy. As he had been the one person I had wanted to call, I phoned him back while my clothes were drying to catch up on his day yesterday.
And the rain came.
No, literally. That's not a euphemism for me crying.
Well, not this time.
And, as my hangers had been strewn on the floor by a playing child while I was on the phone outside, due to no signal inside, I cut the call short. Then I gathered my clothes from the dryers, hung what needed hung, and threw the rest into the basket. Then I raced out of there and barely made it into the car before the rain started in earnest, replete with thunder and much glorious lightning.
It put my growing hissy fit into perspective and dwarfed it right out of existence.
I had a good chat with him about his book fair experience and his upcoming date for the evening and his early morning "one of us" meeting tomorrow. Then he went to tend to laundry and I took my laundry into the house.
Done.
I made tuna chowder for dinner, as I had all the ingredients: my milk, albacore tuna, olive oil, black pepper, and premium oyster crackers to top it all off. Yum!
And I've blogged some more, including this entry. The other entries are here, and here, and here. I guess I need to do a little better about blogging in a timely fashion, but... HEY! Life intrudes!
And this is MY blog.
If you don't like the way I do things, grow some blog of your own (to paraphrase Sir Elton John).
Peace, out, y'all.

i am Superman and i can do anything

The following is the transcript of a conversation which began on August 26 at 8:43pm.
*** *** ***
The peace Guy worte on fb: not quite sure what to think about this one. bald people have a certain attraction to me. i wonder if there's any research in that direction.

The Truth About Hair and Why Indians Would Keep Their Hair Long --

(The gist of the article is this: when trackers cut their hair to conform to military regulations, they lost their ability to sense the enemy. Completely.)

me: Baldness is linked to high testosterone levels, that's for sure. As for the 'long hair' article, that's quite believable. We are, after all, just another animal and there are plenty that use their head hair (think cat's whiskers) as sensors.

peace Guy: so when my hair reaches 10 inches and gets cut off for locks of love, am i going to lose my power like samson?

me: No, dear, unless said power is something you sense with the tips of your hair... oh, i guess that may be true, then and you will lose your ability to sense high humidity in the air!

peace Guy: i'm a whizz at sensing humidity with my hair!

me: True dat! But I don't think that's a qualifying super power... yet!
*** *** ***

I sure miss conversations like this in person, across my dining room table in the morning or late at night in the living room.
I miss him.
I know he is in a good place, with a good job and good folks around him.
But I still wish he were here.
Selfish of me, I know.
Such knowledge does not assuage my lonely heart and head.